Friday Facts #303 - Under 100 bugs (but still not stable)

[Jap2.0]

We have been asked a few times when stable will be released, but my question is, why does it matter exactly which version we call stable? Are you waiting for stable to play a new playthrough?

Well...yeah? Obviously? How many of the players who own Factorio on Steam are willing to right-click the game, select Properties, go to the Betas tab, then opt-in to releases labeled "experimental"? How many ordinary players know how to do that?

You guys can release whatever and whenever you want, it's your decision. Just don't be surprised when players don't hunt down the experimental releases.

This information is one google or forum search away, if someone honestly needs to have the game declared stable to not have to do that, staying on the stable release might not be a bad thing.

Right, but how many people know to do that search? 64,000 people are registered on the forum - 3% of the people who own the game, and I think a significant portion (likely a vast majority) don't log on often, or at all anymore. I was curious, so some quick statistics:

Total members: 64,609
Zero posts: 38,237 (59.18%)
One post or less: 47,459 (73.46%)
Two posts or less: 52,461 (81.20%)
Ten posts or less: 60,826 (94.14%)

Now sure, that isn't necessarily representative of who actively watches the forum. There are people who watch the forum regularly but never post. There are people who posted actively but have since left. But it gives a general idea. (It also reminds me once again that I waste way too much time on here... I'm in the 99.97th percentile. Ouch.)

"What about Reddit," you might say. Yes, there are more people on Reddit than here. 146,217 in /r/factorio. A whole 7%. Maybe 8.

And let's be honest, how many people regularly look in-depth into the "recent news" section in Steam?

Sure, you have people on Youtube and stuff... Mangledpork (Bentham) has 32,859 subs. Katherine of Sky 94,459. Nialus 33,535. Xtermintor 32,112. Antieliz 5,875 (12,419 followers on Twitch). Negative root 10,573 (although he hasn't been active for a couple years). Twitch claims Factorio has 122,000 followers, although I'm not entirely sure how it's getting that number.

And then you have to keep in mind that most of the people outside of that (broadly estimated) 5-20% of people who regularly follow Factorio online would have no idea how ridiculously stable Factorio's experimental releases are.

[Rebmes]

I can tell you that experimental has been a) awesome and everyone will be blown away and b) a bumpy ride at times, not fit for ordinary players

[Ringkeeper]

As most people have the game already, this advice might not help much:

Buy the game in the factorio shop and if possible don't connect it to steam.
If you buy the game on Steam, steam gets up to 30% of the price as rev share. 30% for little effort on their side. Ok, marketing and visibility are high, but that doesn't count for 30%. Not sure how much they take if you buy somewhere else and just redeem it on Steam.

About G2A, the worst part is that people that buy keys their and get blocked complain at the publisher , are pissed on the publisher and write bad critics about them and not at the seller....

[gaelyte]

In US, ok, the price difference is 5$, it's better to buy them officially to be guaranteed to have a key... But in others countries, like in Europe, the game from G2A is worth 15€, while the official version is at 25€ due to the regional pricing. 11$ of difference in this region, it's understandable that some people would prefer the G2A version, even if there are some risks...
And the cracked version isn't the same as a half-priced one, you need a key to play multiplayer, have the update you do often and correctly install the mods
And there is a way to reduce the amount of copies that aren't bought from your site : reduce the gap of price between the different countries, 6$ between the US and Europe, and I think it's not the biggest difference...

[Mernom]

As most people have the game already, this advice might not help much:

Buy the game in the factorio shop and if possible don't connect it to steam.
If you buy the game on Steam, steam gets up to 30% of the price as rev share. 30% for little effort on their side. Ok, marketing and visibility are high, but that doesn't count for 30%. Not sure how much they take if you buy somewhere else and just redeem it on Steam.

About G2A, the worst part is that people that buy keys their and get blocked complain at the publisher , are pissed on the publisher and write bad critics about them and not at the seller....

Why not connect it to Steam? Steam doesn't charge squat for keys generated and sold on third party platforms. Wube 'abuse' it by granting a free Steam key to anyone who bought it on the site, so linking to Steam should have 0 negative consequesnces.

In US, ok, the price difference is 5$, it's better to buy them officially to be guaranteed to have a key... But in others countries, like in Europe, the game from G2A is worth 15€, while the official version is at 25€ due to the regional pricing. 11$ of difference in this region, it's understandable that some people would prefer the G2A version, even if there are some risks...
And the cracked version isn't the same as a half-priced one, you need a key to play multiplayer, have the update you do often and correctly install the mods
And there is a way to reduce the amount of copies that aren't bought from your site : reduce the gap of price between the different countries, 6$ between the US and Europe, and I think it's not the biggest difference...

I THINK that Steam handles regional pricing by themselves, even paying the difference out of their own pocket. I think that this practice is why GOG had to drop it: They couldn't maintain profit while doing it.

[mmmPI]

TL;DR: the card networks have a lot of power. And it's unlikely Wube (or even a huge banding together of merchants) could do anything about it. They need sales, and customers like using VISA, MasterCard, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/bus ... ales.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... swipe-fees

Now sure how it is handle in Europe, but it seems that despite their power, their is still some justice. It seems like the sellers themselves may not do much, but when they group behind one of their third party payment company, they can change stuff.

On the first article from 2003 it says "Over the last two years, both Visa and MasterCard have created products that authenticate online transactions. When online vendors use the new systems, called MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa, their customers must type in passwords to make purchases, much as they use personal identification numbers at teller machines. The merchants are then no longer liable for fraud; instead, the card companies agree to pay for losses."

Now that seems to be the legal option in Europe too, i'm not sure they agreed, but they should be legally entitled.

[BlueTemplar]

I THINK that Steam handles regional pricing by themselves, even paying the difference out of their own pocket. I think that this practice is why GOG had to drop it: They couldn't maintain profit while doing it.

I've never heard about Steam doing it,
and for instance, the converted price for Fallout 4 is originally $30 in U.S. Dollars, but $37 in Israeli New Shekels and Mexican Pesos, and a whopping $54 in U.A.E. Dirhams !
https://steamdb.info/app/377160/
(Which surprises me a bit, I've mostly heard about Australians complaining about this, and it's only $32 for them, but that might be the language barrier issue ?)

[Light]

Another reason for wanting to know when it's close to stable that Klonan seems to have missed is that updates often break mods which can completely halt the ability to play on a modded map.

Sure you can revert the version, but updates tend to break mods often enough that it's best to wait until being closer to stable so you know it won't be as likely to occur. Depending on the change it can take a while for authors to correct their mods, assuming they're even aware of the change in a timely manner.

If some form of notice was provided before a major mod affecting change is made then authors could deploy fixes right away without needing source access to achieve the same result. This is why Bob's mods are often patched within minutes of an update and people can keep playing with them without waiting, which given the size of his mod suite is very much a good thing.

That has been my minor frustration with 0.17 thus far with regards to the updates and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Well, it's not like I've warned you all about it !
viewtopic.php?p=418466#p418466
(I've actually talked about not using mods in experimental since 0.17.0 hit, but perhaps mostly on IRC ?)
(Have you stayed on 0.17.22 though, like you said you would?)

Congrats about warning about the obvious, I guess?

I did stay on .22 for some time to permit the mod authors time to update their work. The few that didn't I had updated myself, which fortunately wasn't many of them after that point.

Not using mods during any experimental branch may as well be a statement of "Play vanilla or quit" since the game will still be evolving even after release, plus experimental is over half a year of twiddling your thumbs stuck in vanilla otherwise. I'd have quit after two months (and nearly did), but I'm still here four years later thanks to mods keeping things interesting all this time. New content and optimizations for mods are often gated to newer builds and so you have to either stay behind or keep up with the development to get the new toys. To the majority the choice is obvious, but it's no less annoying having to poke all the authors to fix things when they're likely busy themselves and it chews into their spare time as well as our own. With that said, complaints from both ends are to be expected when things break, just like with anything we own and use.

While writing that, I feel like I should re-express my condolences to any of you who work in customer service. Stay strong.

[Jon8RFC]

Great and informative read overall, and thanks for the interesting crash report info!

[Ringkeeper]

TL;DR: the card networks have a lot of power. And it's unlikely Wube (or even a huge banding together of merchants) could do anything about it. They need sales, and customers like using VISA, MasterCard, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/bus ... ales.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... swipe-fees

Now sure how it is handle in Europe, but it seems that despite their power, their is still some justice. It seems like the sellers themselves may not do much, but when they group behind one of their third party payment company, they can change stuff.

On the first article from 2003 it says "Over the last two years, both Visa and MasterCard have created products that authenticate online transactions. When online vendors use the new systems, called MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa, their customers must type in passwords to make purchases, much as they use personal identification numbers at teller machines. The merchants are then no longer liable for fraud; instead, the card companies agree to pay for losses."

Now that seems to be the legal option in Europe too, i'm not sure they agreed, but they should be legally entitled.

Both the MasterCard SecureCode and the Verified by Visa cost money. Furthermore you lose customers. Every click more a customer has to do reduces the chance he finishes the transaction (you lose approx 10% of users per click/form they need to fill out... more on the start , less at the end part of the process).

But there will be a change soon (September) at least in Europe. There you NEED 2 factor authentifications for online purchases above 30€. So not only the card and pin but also a security code send by sms/mail/TAN generator etc.

https://www.bankingtech.com/2019/05/psd ... mber-2019/

I really hope the fraud will go down then..... dealing with it every day

Bad part: if you have too many chargebacks (i think 0.5% of all transactions) they can force you to implement even further restrictions or you lose the allowance to accept credit cards.

[BlueTemplar]

Press issues about Wube/Factorio vs G2A in this thread :
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=73261

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

What I still don't understand is why the police isn't involved if G2A (or any other key (re-)seller) is involved with wide-scale fraud.
Why doesn't Wube or Ubisoft or EA or whoever simply sue them? If these companies really think they are right they could easily do that(?)

PS
I live in The Netherlands and have never used a credit card in my life. Here debit cards are MUCH more common.

[Oktokolo]

Why doesn't Wube or Ubisoft or EA or whoever simply sue them? If these companies really think they are right they could easily do that(?)

The real problem is, that Wube gets charged hefty fees by their real business partner - the credit card company - for any purchase that in hindsight is revealed to be credit card fraud. Yes, one would think, that making sure that credit card purchases are legit would be the responsibility of that credit card company. But obviously everyone out there seems to let them get away with charging the only one who can't possibly ensure that there is no fraud - the seller.

Yes, the obvious solution would be to team up as an industry and drop all credit card companies who refuse to do their fuckin job - wich indeed includes protecting both sides of a purchase from fraud. Currently that would probably all credit card companies. That is why enough mass of the industry would have to team up to do it without going bankrupt. But if they manage to do it, they would fix the problem for all industries.

[Koub]

What I still don't understand is why the police isn't involved if G2A (or any other key (re-)seller) is involved with wide-scale fraud.
Why doesn't Wube or Ubisoft or EA or whoever simply sue them? If these companies really think they are right they could easily do that(?)

G2A is registered in Hong Kong, China (I could say China, but not as much China as regular China). I'm sure there are reasons two polish entrepreneurs have chosen to move their company's headquarters from their homeland to Hong Kong (besides the 0% taxes on the companies), but I guess this would make things quite complicated to sue them. And unless there is some massive fraud benefiting organized crime or terrorism, chances somebody will make the effort to investigate are probably quite low.

[Zulan]

It's good to have some more facts in the "G2A debate" and to hold G2A to their word. That's certainly better than just having a twitter warrior with something of a vendetta vs a company dumping out nice words...

I just can't get rid of the feeling this isn't actually about G2A... this is about three issues of which G2A is more of a symptom. And the FFF actually gives the solutions.

1. Credit card fraud

So there's a system which seems easily and unnecessarily open to abuse - and that risk is just left entirely with the merchant. That's just a really bad system. Fortunately the FFF seems to confirm that that there are reasonable payment processors out there.

G2A certainly isn't innocent if they enable CC fraud... but if just for a moment say it's legitimate to resell legally obtained digital goods, it seems odd to put the primary blame on G2A.

Maybe there should be more of an outrage against the business model to charge fees for transactions, make hardly any effort at securing it, and then leave the risk entirely on one side? And more support and focus on fair payment processors.

2. Sales

Again the solution is given - no-sales policy and you don't have to care about G2A.

And the ease of saying "no-sales policy, no problems", makes we wonder if the chargeback issue - which also seems solvable - is sometimes just a pretend argument and the actual problem is with the sales.

But is it really bad if someone buys a key on sale and sells it ouside of the sale? If you make a sale, you are willing to compromise on profit per unit vs number of units sold. Now if I see some rather expensive game and have good reason to suspect it may be on sale soon, I often just don't but it. Maybe I never do. You can easily argue that some G2A customers wouldn't but it for the current "official" non-sale price... So you get a continuous sale effect. That's why I don't understand why you would make a sale and then complain about resellers using a sale (as long as the resellers are not denying actual customers the sales price of physical goods). Now, is it fair if the re sellers are making a profit of this? What "value" are the providing? To some degree they take a risk of not selling their paid for keys. They also force the official pricing to stay at least a little bit "honest". And in the case with an early access price increase, they provide the developers with money earlier which often seems much desired (e.g. preorder).

3. Regional pricing

I get the point why you want it. I just don't like the hypocrisy about it in a globalized world. With absolutely no reference to Wube or other Indie devs we see companies take benefit of globalization all the time - especially with digital goods. It just feels unfair if only consumers mustn't take a benefit. This is also fueled by vastly different income groups within one country.

I don't think its so easy as to declare it fraud. All the measures, like DRM and geofencing are fighting legitimate users. Customers do move between countries ... customers actually sometimes want to gift to someone in a different country.

I would be glad to get rid of sales, regional pricing and all the resellers at the same time and leave as much of a fair price with the company that actually makes the game as possible.

[BlueTemplar]

I live in The Netherlands and have never used a credit card in my life. Here debit cards are MUCH more common.

Me neither (France), but, as far I understand it, when you see "credit cards" being mentioned in discussions like these, it's a shorthand for credit and/or debit cards.

[Shingen]

why does it matter exactly which version we call stable? Are you waiting for stable to play a new playthrough?

i'm not one of the people who asked about which version will be stable, but for me the answer would be: yes, sort of.
long story short, "stable" for me suggests longer "lifespan" of that branch on Steam, like there still are 2 "stable" versions of 0.15 available for some reason.
it's too late for me and the game i started on 0.17.32, but it just would be nice to have a version that is known to not get deleted for at least a year, so it's playable to the end for someone who can't play 24/7.

(yes, i know i could've downloaded non-Steam version from the website and that's what i did, but the lack of Steam Networking required me to install Hamachi to host a server :/)

[slippycheeze]

I live in The Netherlands and have never used a credit card in my life. Here debit cards are MUCH more common.

Me neither (France), but, as far I understand it, when you see "credit cards" being mentioned in discussions like these, it's a shorthand for credit and/or debit cards.

It is really shorthand for "the payment network operated by" the company in question. Companies like VISA and MasterCard just spent so long advertising through banks the "credit" part of the facility that it is now inescapably associated with that word in the US and AU, and probably the English speaking UK too.

[mcirish3]

Hi Devs,

Long time follower first time posting on your forum. Love your game. It is one of the best I have ever played. But I am afraid this will be a rather harsh criticism of this dev post.

I was inspired to comment as a pricing expert on your comments on G2A. I work for a multi-billion dollar corporation as a Sr. Pricing Analyst. When you brought up the problem of G2A I was all with you on the Credit Card Fraud. But as others have pointed out its not G2A's fault its the credit card companies unethical, but legal, business practices.

You called arbitrage "Regional fraud" which it isn't. It's not any kind of fraud, its a legal business practice and if you can't control the holes in the price fence YOU set up, that is on YOU. If you don't like the results of your price fence get rid of the fence. But what you don't get to do is blame others for a problem you created.

You seem to think your industry is somehow special because you have mostly found a way of suppressing the gray market, known in every other business as the used or secondary market. It's not special to you, it's not something to be destroyed, is a valid business practice that has existed for 1000s of years, so get over yourself. The practice of suppressing the used market is anti-consumer because it exposes the consumer to greater risk than would otherwise exist in a normal market. It also leads to motivating unethical practices that harm the product creator as your post clearly shows. Your industry would do far better especially Steam to embrace the used/secondary market and facilitate the selling of used games to capture additional profit out of the transfers yourselves rather than letting sites like G2A to make that money. In short, the practice by the gaming, movie and now book market of trying to suppress the used market is what is truly unethical.

[Koub]

gray market, known in every other business as the used or secondary market.

Used market and grey market are not strictly equivalent. I'm sure you know better than me knowing your job, but the grey market for digital stuff almost excludes used market.

Also abusing regional pricing for digital products might not be a fraud but it's fundamentally different from reselling a manufactured good you have bought somewhere it's built/made for cheap and had to transport it somewhereelse to sell it at higher price **. A digital good costs nothing to transport, and the regional pricing is only there to benefit at the same time people of poor countries (allowing them to buy a game for less than a month's worth or income) and the "digital product makers" so that they can widen their audience and still get paid for they work.

This kind of argumentary is probably one of the reasons big multi-billionnaire companies, that can afford an army of lawyers, jurists and senior accountants to find all the holes in the regulations to exploit them are often disliked by normal people. Saying "It's not illegal if I can find a loophole in the laws" is technically legal, I admit, but in my eyes of random guy, it tars you with the same brush as G2A.

** [Edit] I just found the work I was looking for : it might not be illegal, it is unethical.